WRP it's still my fault for not paying attention. I guess it's karma for making a joke about your reaction times pre-start.
In the end it didn't matter much as it seemed like everyone overshot the first chicane on cold tires
Since I won't be racing sunday I think I'll share a few things I learned in the practise race...
The car loses a lot of power over the race (I ended with 25 less). This means that tire wear will be much better towards the end. So if you're doing uneven stints (I think most will do 7,7,7,6,6), do the short stints first and save the longer ones for last. I did 6,6,6,5,5,5 and last two stops it felt like I had almost no wear when I pulled in, but by then I had no choice.
Refueling: First stop you should take 15l because you want to get the weight down as quickly as possible, and you get 15l "for free" while the crew changes tires. The rest should be evened out so you only carry with you enough fuel to last your next stint, plus maybe 1 lap reserve. I refueled 15,15,40,30,20 (last stop I used the auto-fill + 2l).
A thing I noticed when doing my 5 minute stop was that if you hit start right after choosing how much fuel to put in, the car slows down way below the regular pit lane speed. In a close race this might cost you a few seconds and maybe lose a position. Don't pause until the car pulls into the box.
Lastly, don't overtake on the straight from Mulsanne leading down to Indianapolis. It's narrow, bumpy and you really don't want to go into the high speed right-hander side by side or in dirty air. Ease off the throttle and tuck in behind.
Good luck 👍
First to last in the span of 30 seconds. It was actually quite fun for a few laps trying to get through traffic and then it got a bit lonely. But I did learn a few things and definitely have a good strategy worked out for Sunday now.
